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Comment by Aldipower | Hacker News Reader

Good for Norway, but is not directly transferable to other countries. Norway has still one of the cheapest electricity in the world, because of hydroelectricity, oil to electricity and other sources. They heat with electricity since decades, where this for example was unthinkable in Germany. Yes, heat pumps are an improvement compared to radiators of course. Now, in Germany, we powered up our coal power plants again to generate electricity, feeding heat pumps. This is just ridiculous, because we have no hydro power like Norway has. And wind energy isn't enough.

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Norway has still one of the cheapest electricity in the world

Norway is actually pretty middle-of-the-road, in line with France and Greece for example.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

You need to compare this with incomes and GDP! Norway is one of the richest countries in the world per person.

Nuclear power is a great carbon-free option.

Nuclear power - at least when talking about nuclear fission, not fusion - is a great way of decarbonizing the grid, but I don't know about the long term. Neither I'm sure if renewables are a sustainable way to generate energy. Maybe a mix of both would bring the best benift if we manage to develop the power grid towards a decentralized and smart grid fueld by renewables and backed by nuclear (fusion) power.

> This is just ridiculous

Ridiculous compared to what? Burning fuel at every home?

I get the distaste of needing to power up coal plants, but if you want to look at CO2 output of a mixed grid with fossil fuels + renewables vs direct fuel consumption you'll find the CO2 output is going to be much lower on average for the heat pump + seasonal coal plant fire up.

That's because even if wind can't fully power all your heat pumps, it is powering a large chunk of them.

Even without renewables, burning gas for electricity and using that to power heat pumps can easily be more efficient than burning that gas for heating homes directly, in most climates with commonly available heat pumps. Coal is a bit dirtier, though.

I can guarantee you that oil power plants is not making electricity cheaper in Norway. Mainly because there is not a single one in Norway...

I didn't talked about oil power plants. But 2022 Norway got 100TWh from oil, which is a total of 20% from the energy mix! 300TWh came from hydro power. Energy is in the wider sense, transferable. So it does not matter, if you have an oil power plant. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...

How do you conclude that electricity prices are low in Norway because of oil, when oil is not used for electricity? That makes no sense.

Electricity prices in Norway is not low because of oil. Oil/gas is not used for heating, and prices are higher than other places. So if anything the electric prices are higher as oil products are more expensive in Norway compared to most other places.

Yes, look, if you have 20% oil in your energy mix, this is used somewhere. For example by ships, cars and also some industries. If you would not use this 20% for some energy, you would need to burn wood instead or maybe better use electricity. :) So burning oil for some extend keeps electricity prices overall lower.

If Google is telling me correctly the kwh price for electricity in Norway is around 12 Eurocents. This is very cheap! In Germany it is currently 30 Cents, last winter even 50 Cents. And Germans getting lower salaries..

> Now, in Germany, we powered up our coal power plants again to generate electricity, feeding heat pumps. This is just ridiculous, because we have no hydro power like Norway has.

So what. A heat pump makes 3-4 kWh of heat energy out of 1 kWh of electricity, and a coal plant, especially a combined district heat-power coal fire plant, has a far higher efficiency than any domestic gas/oil boiler can achieve.

> coal plant, especially a combined district heat-power coal fire plant, has a far higher efficiency than any domestic gas/oil boiler can achieve.

This is bullshit. Domestic boilers have a thermal efficiency of around 93%. The most modern coal plants have electrical efficiencies around <47% on 100% and around 43% on 50% output. Combined heat-power plants have a combined efficiency of around 90%. And the centralised versions have the transport loss.

Getting all the calculations right is really complicated.

Edit: the annual mean of the heat pump COP is not 3-4, either.

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